Pokertracker significance?

[JoeC]

Hey all, I just started using Pokertracker to track my $25 NLHE play at Party... I was just wondering, how many hands do you think I need to play before I get a true estimate of my BB/100? Right now I'm at 766 and that obviously isn't enough, but would 5k or 10k hands be enough? Thanks.

[Blarg]

At 20k hands, I still see my BB/hr go up and down pretty significantly over a couple of days wins or losses.

You can learn lots of interesting things from the program very quickly, like what your preflop raising percent tends to be and how much money you voluntarily put into the pot, but for things like BB/hr, BB/100, amount won, or true win rate, 5k is just a drop in the bucket. Almost anything could happen in 5k hands. At 10k you're getting somewhere more useful. But you can still expect surprisingly short-term fluctuations to throw your stats out of whack for quite some time to come.

Some say once you get 50k hands, you'll start zeroing in on stats that last. That sounds about right to me.